Ladies and gentlemen...I give you the Dutch Provo's. Make no mistake, these were the original proverbial protest punks who packed a sociological punch with a winken blinken and nod to the Marquis de Sade and loaded to the Dr. Benbay max with a hyper hypodermic needle full of the illogically logical absurdity of Dadaism that eventually tore the fabric of Dutch society where dykes could live harmoniously along dikes...weed was freed and prostitution was now the legal norm as the legal tender loins enticed and entranced. Dutch sex workers, thanks to the Provos's were also the first sex workers to unionize into the Red Straad for protection and status. I trust a Dutch hooker with my life more than I would a Monsanto CEO with GMO's. Enter now the whirlwind world of the Provo's and walk into the vortex of revolution with a purpose and not merely as Abbie Hoffman said, "for the hell of it"...the Provos were Rebels with a cause!
Promiscuity and politics do make for strange if not interesting bed partners, but if handing over your hard-on cash to a hooker is not on your hit parade, but hugging a hookah with a bowl of cannibis bliss is, then never mind thanking God...thank the Provo's! They were in the front lines of reform of the marijuana laws in Holland and lets face it...you can't get high smoking tulips! Remember the Happenings and Human Be-Ins in America in the late 60's? The Provo's were having Happenings and Be-ins as early as 1963...the American counter culture followed shortly afterwards in the the wake of the counter culture awakening.
The roots of the Provo's are planted firmly in the soil of European juvenile delinquency. While Teddy Boys were mixing it up in England in the shadow of post-war Europe, the never, neverland of the Netherlands were rife with strife by gangs of young rebels called Nozems. Cruising the streets they were angry angst laden moped mavens who out of sheer boredom had a ball raising hell in Holland and pissing off police.
The term "provo" was used as a term of derision for the moped monsters by the media, but one who saw the potential of harnessing this potentially potent energy and split the atom of social change was a philosophy student in Amstersdam, Roel Van Duyn. He wrote to a friend, and I quote here, "It is our task to turn their agression into revolutionary consciousness"
Van Duyn started publishing a Provo newspaper, again before the Digger Papers, the San Fran Oracle or the Berkeley Barb. The philosophy of the Provo's guided mainly by Van Duyn's own beliefs were that of the Marquis de Sade, Herbert Marcuse and a dash of dadaism. While Van Duyn kept the polical course of the ship on a steady course, it was Robert Jasper Grootveld that added street theatrics and a cacophony of comedy and was dubbed "the clown prince of pop culture" in Amsterdam. It was he who began the happenings prior to the Provo's as early as 1963. He was an extroverted exhibitionist and was leading a battle against consumer brain-washing of the "herd mentality" imposed by corporations and products. The masses were addicts and needed to break their habit and get the corporate media monkey off their backs. It was the Lennon-McCartney of political change or rather more like Leonard Cohen and Groucho Marx....Van Duyn had a lock on the academics and intelligentsia...while Grootveld appealed to the street punks.
At one point to exploit media attention to marijuana reform the Provo's rented a bus to travel Europe to spread the gospel of ganja...again...before Kesey and Further took to the rolling paper road. The Provo's crossed borders and kept the bowls full of illegal substances and meticulously hid the "real shit" when coming to a border crossing and placing dog food and dried spices in containers for border cops to find...thinking they had scored big on the Richter scale of drug busts...during the first bust when the cop shop PR departments hailed the confisication..it came out they had confiscated fake drugs and dried dog food and dog doo do. The newspapers had a field day now with one headline exclaiming...Marijuana is Dogfood! From then on cops left them alone as they didn't want to tarnish their image anymore than it was! Score on for the Provo's!
The following year, Grootveld opened the first "druk stoor" the forerunner of todays Coffee Houses in Amsterdam where they sold real and fake pot...and the Provo's were now taken seriously. Leaflets were passed out on the streets...manifesto's published in the Provo newspaper and speeches given in public parks. It's appeal was not that of capitalism, communism or socialism. It was a Maynard G. Krebs philosophy of No Work at any Cost! It was a charasmatic anarchistic appeal that was heavily influenced by the anarchist teachings of the son in law of Karl Marx, Paul Lafargue.
The Provos began to implement "white plans" such as the White Bike Plan to combate traffic terrorism, the same terrorism of which I wrote about in my piece "The Bicycle Bolsheviks" The plan was to ban fossil fuel vehicular traffic from the city center and replace urban transit with free bicycles. ( Hear that Seattle? It was happening in Amsterdam long before Starbucks got a stranglehold on your grunge culture!) The Provos provided the first 50 bicycles and hoped the city would hop on board the plan..but leave it to the power structure to order the police to confiscate the bikes...who knows what clout pedal powered people might gain. They might even overthrow the government. These actions only provoked the citizenry to join the Provo parade now that the absurdity of the power structure was showing it's true colors. It was no longer just beatniks and street punks, but subversives of every stripe and strata of society formed ranks...they even attacked the Royal Family by digging up dirt of it's past involvement with the Nazi's during WWII and their complicity in crimes committed against the Dutch people.The sacred bastion of the Royal Family was now under public attack and scrutiny.
The Provo's now began publishing leaflets on bomb making and rules of engagement for taking on the police during demonstrations. Legal funds an counsel were set in place and planned protests ranged from anti-nuke to peace to womens rights to marijuana and prostitution legalization. Like all good things that go up...they must come down..and in the case of the Provo's they came down with a crash. I don't mean by police action...but factionalism in their own ranks..it happens to every movement. Splinter groups form and fight and split off...the movement is then weakened and the coup de grace is delivered by the street politics entering the government politics and participating "legally" in the system as part of the system. Even SDSers became Democrats in this country such as Tom Hayden. Today in Amsterdam the mark of the Provo's is evident...legal marijuana, legal prostitution, bikes are a way of transpo life and the country has one of the most liberal outlooks on life today.
Whatever happened to those happening Provo's? Van Duyn is now an industrial designer and developed a small electric car called the Witkar but failed due to the high cost of it's production. The Royal Family? Well, they have changed their ways are now staunch environmentalists and sustainability has replaced the swastika.Grootveld ,the clown prince founded a new party of anarchist called the Kabouter which is "gnome" in Dutch and works closely with the Green Party. Together both parties have members on the city council of Amsterdam. In his spare time he builds giant rafts out of styrofoam. His first one was mistaken for garbage and was towed away by the sanitation department. Grootveld then threatened to sue the city so appease him the city gave him a stretch of harbor to keep his raft. He also established a workshop on the harbor and has been making landscape art out of garbage.